[extropy-chat] Standing on Giants

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> A good story.
> 
> Wasn't it also Newton that said: Aristotle is my friend, Plato is my
> friend but my greatest friend is truth?
> 
> Newton may have been lived a long, and useful, but lonely life. Shame
> about the last, if so.

Not really. He was quite sociable, once he got into politics, and kept
a neice, Catherine Barton, as a sort of house keeper/social secretary.
Catherine in turn, was an intelligent, witty, and beautiful woman who
had a long term affair with Newton's benefactor and boss at the Mint,
Charles Montague, 1st Earl of Halifax. She was a close friend of
Jonathan Swift and the toast of the Kit-Kat Club, a london social club
that all the powerful whigs of the age belonged to, including Newton.
She had a nickname, even: "The Body".  Newton's dinner parties were
famous for their brilliant and witty conversation, and, unlike his
Puritan heritage, his home was festooned in crimson and other bright
colors.

Newton's comments about (hunchbacked) shoulders to stand on reflects
the long term scientific rivalry he had with Hooke, who was famous not
just for his taxonomical work, his physiological work, and Hooke's Law,
but for rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, particularly Bedlam
and a number of other landmark buildings.

Newton's comments were a dig at the fact that folks like Hooke seemed,
to Newton, to put as much energy into PR as into science, where Newton
rarely published his work. It took constant badgering and an offer of
subsidy from Halley before he would publish his Principia, and similar
badgering by others tended to be required for much of his other work,
such as optics, etc.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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